This time it was a balloon. Could a 'cartel drone' be next?
- - This time it was a balloon. Could a 'cartel drone' be next?
Lauren Villagran and Cybele Mayes-Osterman, USA TODAYFebruary 13, 2026 at 8:04 AM
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SUNLAND PARK, New Mexico – Under a blue midday sky, the soundscape at the border fence included the call of roosters in Mexico, a Union Pacific train in the U.S. and a law enforcement helicopter chopping overhead.
Not heard at the time: the buzz of "cartel drones."
Trump administration officials and security experts say drones used by Mexican criminal organizations to smuggle drugs or surveil border security forces represent a potential security threat – one that provoked a sudden, eight-hour closure of the nearby El Paso International Airport on Feb. 10.
An administration official publicly blamed the no-fly order on a "cartel drone incursion," before competing accounts from other officials suggested border agents fired a new laser technology on what turned out to be a party balloon, according to multiple media reports. The FAA abruptly shut down the airport as a precaution.
Experts say it's true Mexican cartels are using drones with greater frequency and growing capabilities. The cartels are surveilling U.S. law enforcement at the border and smuggling in payloads of drugs. Inside Mexico, they've begun outfitting drones with explosives to attack rival criminal organizations and security forces.
But the last thing Mexican criminal organizations want is to attack Americans or U.S. law enforcement and provoke the wrath of the U.S. government, said Juan Camilo Jaramillo, a Colombia-based investigator for the cartel research group InSight Crime.
"That is a line they aren't going to cross," he said.
'No evidence ... of weaponized drones on the US side'
In a 2025 executive order, President Donald Trump recategorized six Mexican cartels as "Foreign Terrorist Organizations," a move that U.S. officials have claimed lends them greater authority to target the organizations with military force. Experts have questioned the legality of that assertion.
The Department of Homeland Security has tracked tens of thousands of suspected drone sightings in recent years, but none has yet posed a deadly threat inside U.S. territory, experts say.
The Pentagon recently supplied DHS with anti-drone laser technology, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection deployed it in El Paso on Feb. 9, people familiar with the matter told USA TODAY.
DHS didn’t respond to a request for comment regarding the agency’s deployment of the technology or its role in the airport closure.
Sunland Park is part of the El Paso metropolitan area, where the U.S.-Mexico border fence cuts through urban sprawl for miles, separating the city and southern New Mexico communities from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. At ports of entry, U.S. Customs and Border Protection uses thermal and other technologies to detect people trafficking drugs, including carrying drugs internally. But drones present new challenges.
In a Senate hearing in July, Steven Willoughby, director of a DHS program to counter unmanned aircraft, said border agents detected more than 27,000 drones near the border, on the U.S. or Mexican sides, in the last six months of 2024. Many were flying above the legal altitude, and at night when darkness can shroud illegal activity.
A view of the U.S.-Mexico border fence in Sunland Park, New Mexico, outside El Paso, Texas on Feb. 11, 2026.
As rival cartels use explosive-laden drones to attack each other, he warned lawmakers, "it is only a matter of time before Americans or law enforcement are targeted in the border region."
Jaramillo, the InSight Crime investigator, said most cartel drone capacity is basic and business-related, involving commercially available drones used to surveil smuggling routes and competitors.
Warring criminal factions are increasingly using drones to carry improvised explosive devices, he said, but their use has been concentrated in lawless regions of Mexico's interior.
Forty percent of all IED seizures in Mexico occurred near the border between Michoacán and Jalisco in the country's south, according to data obtained by InSight Crime from Mexico's defense department. That's where the Jalisco Cartel New Generation has battled disparate armed criminal groups for control of smuggling routes.
Mexican states such as Guerrero, Zacatecas and Sonora have seen "exponential increases" in the use of drones, as well, InSight Crime reported.
Still, "there is no evidence in the public sphere of weaponized cartel drones on the U.S. side of the border," said Austin Doctor, director of strategic initiatives at the University of Nebraska's National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center.
"They are primarily targeting either rival cartel forces, local civilian populations to motivate displacement or to attack local security forces," he said. "The question is, are we at a growing risk of that shift?"
'The threat has been neutralized'
The morning of the El Paso airport closure, on Feb. 11 at 7:37 a.m. local time, Transportation Department Secretary Sean Duffy posted on social media that the FAA and the Pentagon had "acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion."
"The threat has been neutralized," he wrote in a post on X, "and there is no danger to commercial travel."
Other administration officials challenged that version of events as the day progressed. Shortly after Duffy's post, a reporter asked Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo what her government knew about the so-called incursion.
She had no information, she said. "If the FAA or any other part of the U.S. government has any information, they can ask the Mexican government (about it)," she added. "We will maintain what we have always maintained: permanent communication."
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo speaks during her daily morning press conference, at the National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico, on Feb. 4, 2026.
U.S.-Mexico cooperation on security matters has improved dramatically under Sheinbaum Pardo, said Roberta Jacobson, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico and co-founder of consultancy Dinámica Americas. That includes partnering on extraditions, intelligence-sharing and joint surveillance, she said.
Over the last year, Sheinbaum Pardo has faced perilous political obstacles in her country's relationship with its powerful northern neighbor. But every time Trump takes to social media, angered by drug trafficking – or drone incursions, Sheinbaum Pardo has deftly reminded him of their working partnership, Jacobson said.
The two leaders spoke in January. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Mexican counterpart followed up days later, and a "ministerial security" meeting was planned for February.
"Maybe ironically, maybe not, it has always seemed to me that the best cooperation occurs behind the scenes without much fanfare," Jacobson said. "It comes from the unglamourous and behind-the-scenes sharing of information that happens behind the scenes."
Lauren Villagran covers immigration and the border for USA TODAY and can be reached at [email protected].
Cybele Mayes-Osterman covers national security.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: CBP may have downed a balloon with a laser. Is a 'cartel drone' next?
Source: “AOL Breaking”
